Ambulance bosses have declared a “critical incident” as hospitals get clogged up with Covid-19 patients.
South Central Ambulance Service declared the incident due to extreme pressure early on Wednesday morning.
It follows reports of ambulances queuing outside hospitals across the country and with makeshift tents being set up to triage patients outside packed A&Es.
Yesterday the UK reported Covid-19 hospitalisations moved above 20,000 and reached their highest level since January 2021.
At 2.30am South Central Ambulance Service announced the critical incident via its Twitter account.
The service asked those it serves in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire to only call 999 in a life-threatening or serious emergency.
It posted: “SCAS has tonight declared a critical incident due to extreme pressures across our services.
“Our staff are working extremely hard to respond to calls and manage the situation and we continue to prioritise those patients with life-threatening injuries and illnesses.”
It added: “Declaring a critical incident means we are able to focus our resources on those patients most in need and communicates the pressure we are under to our patients and health system partners.”
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Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “Trusts across the country are facing enormous pressures, despite moving out of the winter months when the NHS is traditionally at its busiest.
“Although vaccinations have had a significant positive impact on mortality rates, the number of people with Covid-19 in hospital is on the rise.
“Emergency care also is under particular strain, bed occupancy is at a high level, and we are concerned about the number of delayed discharges which indicate real pressures across the whole health and care system.
“Ambulance services are at the sharp end, with extraordinary pressures reflected in growing handover delays, which in turn are feeding through to delayed responses.
“They are doing all they can in extremely difficult circumstances, with high Covid-related staff absences compounding severe workforce shortages.
“Trust leaders are keenly aware of the impact of these delays and addressing them is an absolute priority for the NHS.”
Some homebirth services in the regions have been suspended because ambulances may not be able to get to pregnant mothers in time if something went wrong.
The REACT swab testing study for England this week found one in every 12 over 55 year olds had the virus as of March 31 and this was still rising.
Latest data shows 20,398 people were in UK hospitals with Covid-19 as of Monday.
This includes both patients admitted for Covid and patients in for other conditions who test positive once admitted for other ailments.
All Covid-19 positive patients have to be isolated from general patients which takes up staff and bed capacity.
This is the highest since the January 2021 surge when 39,256 tested positive on wards. The number in hospital reached 20,050 in January 2022.
An extra £39 billion will go to the NHS and social care following the Tories’ National Insurance hike, branded as the Health and Social Care Levy.
The Department of Health and Social Care announced that from Wednesday the levy will come into effect and begin to raise money to help tackle the Covid backlogs.
There is currently a 6.1 million NHS treatment waiting list in England.
Dr Layla McCay, director at the NHS Confederation, said: “Health leaders will never take for granted the additional funds that have been given to the NHS and they will do everything within their power to put it to best use for their patients.
“However the simple truth is that with rising costs and inflation, on top of the NHS having to absorb Covid costs that were previously paid for by the Government, the new levy is now worth, and will deliver, less.
“The Government must wake up to the reality that the ambitious targets accompanying this extra investment will not be possible without decisive action to improve the workforce crisis across health and social care. In England, there are currently around 110,000 vacancies in the NHS and around 105,000 in social care.
“As the country learns to ‘live with Covid’, the NHS is seeing the impact of this with one in thirteen people now infected with the virus in England and hospital admissions close to the peak seen in January. This has a direct knock-on effect on the NHS’s ability to tackle waiting lists, which would not have been expected when the levy was set nearly six months ago.”
The extra cash from the Health and Social Care Levy takes the annual NHS funding rise back up to around 4% - which is its historic average since its foundation - following a decade-long funding squeeze.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid was asked on BBC Breakfast when the NHS waiting list would start to fall.
He said: “What we can do in the NHS is increase activity levels and that is exactly what this extra funding is going to do.
“The one thing that no government can control is demand for the NHS, especially on the back of a pandemic.
“We estimate some 11 million people stayed away from the NHS during the height of the pandemic. I think we can all understand why that happened. I want those people to come back.
“I want them to know that the NHS is there, that it’s open for them. I want them to be seen.
“What I don’t know, no-one knows, is what proportion of those people will come back. Is it 50%? Is it 70% or 30%? That is why it’s very hard to put a number on where the waiting list goes.
“It is already at six million and it will go higher before it starts to come down.”
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